Book review: Urban environments in Africa - A critical analysis of environmental politics

Da Silva Oliveira, Eduardo Henrique [UCL]

The book’s arguments enables urban political ecologists to problematize and question the binaries between, for example urban and rural or society and nature, that have continually challenged urban studies and urban-policy making. Drawing on fieldwork data as well as on multidisciplinary studies on urban environmental history, urban spirituality, biogeography and environmental politics, Myers argues that most of current urban knowledge as well as urban policies in the Global South are predominantly shaped by research on and from the North. However, the author underlines that urban environments in the Global South such as those taken as case studies in the book – Nairobi, Kenya; Lusaka, Zambia; Cape Town, South Africa; Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Dakar, Senegal, have strong imperatives, and unique but often overlooked capacity to innovate and experiment for sustainability. The author calls, therefore, for a renewed research focus on urbanization in Africa, and suggests targeted efforts to correct structural biases in the knowledge production system drawing obvious connections to the trials of today, with the colonialist past and generally corrupt present.